Lamp, broken circa 1988

usually i upload reviews straight up over here in the format I've been doing, but I've played enough games from this year that I have opinions on that I'm gonna go out of order and then cannibalize them over there. And to start, reverse cannibalism! PENNY'S BIG BREAKAWAY [3] These sick fucks. All the trailers for this game were about how it's the Sonic Mania team and how it's this big fun platform adventure that's a throwback to like what if the sega saturn had more going on. They didn't tell anyone they made Gimmick 3D! Who the fuck would be cruel enough to sell Gimmick 3D to kids?! TEKKEN 8 [2] Gift of the Magi'd myself. Got this game to support a friend going through a tough time only to learn they thought I bought it for myself, and the tough time might prevent them from being able to play this. My fault! There have never been two good Tekkens in a row, and, well, behold. I'm definitely not just bitter because I became a Ganryu main at the end of Tekken 7 and will almost 100% never get to play my beautiful boy again. PIZZA TOWER: THE NOISE UPDATE [4] Last year, my personal GOTY was tied between Void Stranger and Pizza Tower. I eventually decided to get behind Void Stranger because it was more important to me to tell people to play it and how fuckin impossible great it is. Pure mechanics though? Pizza Tower in a walk. This year, Pizza Tower is threatening to do it a-fucking-gain with a free update that adds a new playable character that plays so differently that all these stages look and act differently now. They also added a secret third mode that I think could possibly get someone killed! What a great game! UNICORN OVERLORD [4] Decided to go outside of my comfort zone and hit the jackpot. Time devouring tactics, which I'm fortunate enough to be able to use while on an exercise bike. It also has a story, I hear. POCKET CARD JOCKEY: RIDE ON! [4] In my review of the original, I wrote this: "One day they'll put that iOS one on the Switch and I'll scream to death, come back to life, and play the shit out of it, much like my homie the Pocket Card Jockey does." They did. I did. It's a port of a perfect game on a system more people have. Go fuckin play it.

I can't get the screenshot I took to embed for whatever reason, so here's a transcript on the most auspicious appearance of Corporate Officer No. 1. On page 48, Paragraph 242 states the following: "For instance, in or around March 2021, Ms. Grant introduced herself to WWE Corporate Officer No. 1 when they passed one another in the hallway. WWE Corporate Officer No. 1 responded by telling Ms. Grant that WWE Corporate Officer No. 1 knew exactly who she was." So that's not good.

sure! Top 10 Games I played this year Void Stranger Pizza Tower Street Fighter 6 Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon Moonring Alan Wake II My House Super Mario Bros Wonder Cocoon Chants of Sennaar Other games I liked this year Retro Bowl College F-Zero 99 My Friendly Neighborhood YEAH YOU WANT THOSE GAMES RIGHT? SO HERE YOU GO! NOW LETS SEE YOU CLEAR THEM! Terra Nil Battlebit Remastered before they fucked it up A bunch of stuff through the Netflix Games program the Fortnite Racing Game Age of Empires 4 on Xbox Metroid Prime Remastered Pocket City 2 Quake 2 Rerelease Old games I played this year Landstalker Paper Mario Grindstone Final Fantasy XII SO MUCH TETRIS Castlevania Legends Anodyne DNF Duel Games I didn't like, old or new Battlebit Remastered after they fucked it up Redfall Trepang2 Hi-Fi Rush Fuga: Melodies of Steel Maquette Starfield Lies of P Paradise Killer A bunch of stuff through the Netflix Games program Games I Wanted To Play And Didnt Exoprimal (couldn't get people together) The Tartarus Key (might do that tomorrow but maybe not) El Paso Elsewhere (need more space between Alan Wake and this) Weird West (it's $10 on steam rn but my save is on xbox) Alien Hominid HD (waiting for people to come hang out) Metal Gear Solid 1 re-release (reviews aint great) 24 Killers (didn't seem like the right time (vulnerable)) Wo Long Fallen Dynasty (didn't seem like the right time (infuriating)) I have also cleared 500 written reviews on Backloggd, which can be found here.

Alright! That's it! I feel like when I next attempt this I'll be ready to do it at a more regular clip. Thanks again to everyone who still participates in this. "Diaspora Problems" by Soul Glo "Sometimes, Forever" by Soccer Mommy "Krüller" by Author & Punisher "The Endgame" by Treat "Autofiction" by Suede I do not know anything about Treat. I look at this album cover and figure it's a metal band, as it looks like one. I now do a google search. Well, they're not the kind of metal band I thought they were! And, weirdly, old metal bands have tended to do better in this whole thing than younger ones have (sleep not withstanding (i still occasionally just sit back and remember how much that record bored me (cuz I know other metalheads who like sleep))). Before I hit play it finally occurs to me that cover is sperm approaching a speaker cone. 10-4.

Hi. I'm back again. Things got worse again for a second but that's good now too. This has been on my mind because I said I'd finish it, but I didn't want to say anything until it was all done lest I get anyone else's hopes up. Well, I have. Tomorrow I'll post the last review and maybe in January I'll do some kind of "in 2024 i'll listen to 2023's album of the year" thing. Either way, thanks for your patience. "Diaspora Problems" by Soul Glo "Sometimes, Forever" by Soccer Mommy "Krüller" by Author & Punisher "Autofiction" by Suede I'm vaguely aware of Soul Glo. This is how vaguely: A younger friend of mine that keeps me up to date with music (and in return calls me "unc" lol) who only really rarely likes rock music attempted to put me up on this last winter, but December was when The Problems started so I didn't get around to it. Happy to do so now!

hey i have some indie games to come in here and yell about because toddland 2023 came out so I feel the need to make sure people see these things and that they are not hidden So one of these games is from 2018, and the other released 2023. The 2018 game is called ZeroRanger, and it is the best shootemup of the last ten years. I can't embed links today so you can find that here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/809020/ZeroRanger/ It looks and sounds roughly like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSO3jV0Gz_0 It's great! Even if you don't like shootemups you should look at this thing, because it's the best solution to "how do you make these games matter when you can't insert coins?" that I have ever seen. On top of that, at the upper threshhold of learning how to play it, it manages to blend demanding requirements with satisfying rewards that's a bit like if Ghouls & Ghosts was also good to play. I cannot stress how much I recommend ZeroRanger, and if that's all that comes of me posting this stuff, it's worth doing it. So the same team released a new game September 1st and it's a puzzle game with more dedicated storytelling moments in it, and if I'm being honest it's all I've done this evening. It's making a run at having the best style and narrative delivery in a game that I've seen definitely this year, and as far as pixel art goes maybe since Hyper Light Drifter? Which idk if y'all played that but Hyper Light Drifter is one of the games that's made me most satisfied I ever took this hobby up in the first place. So I'm not invoking it lightly. Anyways, it's called Void Stranger, and it's right here! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2121980/Void_Stranger/ EDIT: Actually, here's a little of the old cross promotion! I've uploaded a bunch of new reviews on Backloggd, and the most effusive (and I think longest?) review I have on that website is for Hyper Light Drifter, so, here's that review, and if you click on the user name you can see all the new reviews I posted https://www.backloggd.com/u/appstore/review/704015/

"Sometimes, Forever" by Soccer Mommy "Autofiction" by Suede "Krüller" by Author & Punisher* *pending relisten I am vaguely aware of Suede. My biggest memory of them is at one point I was sitting around with my best friend while we were drinking beers and playing songs, and they have one song where the vocalist goes "lulla-ba-by" and I asked "did they just say lulla-ba-by" and she said no. Then the chorus looped around again, and they did it again, and I pointed right at the speakers while staring at her while she laughed and hid her face. I couldn't tell you what they sounded like.

I played four hours of Bomb Rush Cyberfunk today and here's my first impressions: Holy fuck they really did it. It's a new Jet Set Radio game.

Hi! I haven't posted any reviews all year because December to July was pretty much All Horror, but during that period I was writing reviews and publishing them somewhere no one could find them. Well, I've decided to make that public, and will point you to my account on Backloggd, where I've written over 450 reviews this year. So, if you've ever looked at a review of mine and gone "heh," you can see many, many more over there. EDIT: I should explain my methodology for writing those reviews. I have a random year generator give me eight years from 1990 to 2023 (I've exhausted everything I have to say about games from the 80s) and pick games I have something to say about. So it's not that this week I literally played those eight games, just that when perusing the years I got handed and seeing the games I found, there was a memory or experience with those games close enough to the surface that I felt like sharing it. Also, on that site, I do use a 5 score that I don't use on here, but I only use that to mark what I think the best game of that year is. As for this year, I think this has been a really phenomenal year so far. I'll go ahead and post my reviews of the 2023 games I've played, starting with what I think is the absolute, impossible, unstoppable front runner for Game of the Year, and if you have a PC and haven't played it, you have no excuse. You play video games. It's an expensive hobby. You have $20. I know you do. Go and get... PIZZA TOWER [4] When imagining what games would be like in the future when I was a child, I saw this and not 20,000 more pixelated platformers. It is as explosive and hellish as the best games of this era, the Mario Bros to Cruelty Squad's Duke Nukem. METROID PRIME REMASTERED [3] This might be unfair since (at time of writing I had) a sore throat, a recently broken fever, an ominous rash on both of my hands, a pulled muscle in my foot, and a union of blisters on my feet, but playing this is making me like Hollow Knight even more than I thought I did. MY HOUSE [4] This is a Doom WAD. If you play Doom WADs, go find this thing, DO NOT READ UP ABOUT IT FIRST, and play it. You'll want the pk3. If you have played it, here's my review. REDFALL [3] Or, "Squirrels Sell... but Who's Buying?" This is an important reminder that my 3 means that I do not regret playing this. It does not mean I recommend playing it. I think here I actively kind of don't, unless you really enjoy the idea of a ghost town and can tune out gear comparison. I'm in the first party, I am not in the second party, and upon learning that if a computer crashes a player cannot rejoin your session, I called it a day. STREET FIGHTER 6 [4] It's neat to see Capcom release a Street Fighter that is good, immediately, and with no major pitfalls other than "I'm not sure the battle pass is worth $5." Also, the Evo Top 6 was the best fighting game tournament I've ever seen. BATTLEBIT REMASTERED [4] There's that meme image with Sonic in it, that says "I want shorter games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work less and I'm not kidding," and this game feels like we are all trying to make that a reality.

Things are, finally, not so bad. I don't want to talk about it. I want to talk about these records. By the way, if anyone else wants to submit stuff even though the "deadline" is closed, I don't mind. I will say that I'm probably going to relisten to Author & Punisher at some point during this process given that it's been six months since I heard it. "Sometimes, Forever" by Soccer Mommy "Krüller" by Author & Punisher* *pending relisten While it's neat that there's a pseudo-indie rock revival and that it is mostly centered around women, I would be lying if I said the discourse around it has not acted like a hellish barrier keeping me from ever thinking about Phoebe Bridgers without thinking about a culture war for dumbasses over a television show performance. I will do my best to not let that inform me listening to this record.

hey, quick update. I have had a string of terrible happenings to a degree that's kind of hard to parse and I'm still recovering. I will get to this, because I gave my word that I would and I stick to my word, but I don't know when because I don't want to make new memories while things are so bad.

Alright! Let's get started! I know Author & Punisher cuz he's from my city! I listened to this album once last year, around when it came out, and went "this is neat" but I didn't retain more of it. I'm more than happy to give it another shot under any circumstances, and these circumstances will do nicely.

After the Alexis Marshall allegations from Kristin Hayter I had to cash out on that entirely, but I can't navigate that conflict for anyone but myself. I was surprised to see a reply to this (I say "a reply" because I have lawful on ignore) and honestly the timing blows because there is A LOT OF UPHEAVAL happening in my life right now so I will get started on this in January when I'm more in the mood for new things. So, if anyone else wants to participate, go for it! Submission is open late this time!

PENTIMENT [4] A biggish budget Disco Elysium-like with a heavy emphasis on charm and art history headed by the person behind Fallout New Vegas, but also an EXTREMELY deft hand in how it reveals how your build effects what you see. Disco has the bold idea to show you options you can roll on even if your stats won't clear them, to plant more specific seeds about the kind of player you might like to try next time. Pentiment instead at no point reveals what's available for different builds, and those different builds can change on six different factors (so far! I'm only in act 2!). I am in constant awe of what they've done here. High marks, strong recommendation, probably #3 on my top 5 but I could see it passing SIGNALIS.

Speaking of Game Pass, I figured something out yesterday. I went through all the games I played this year through Game Pass and what I scored them at. I've been subscribed all year and have played 32 games (and possibly 34 by the end of the year). I've liked 15 of them. I have the Game Pass Ultimate so I'm paying $15 a month, or $180 a year. To play all the games I played/intend to play this year without game pass, it would have cost me $855. And again, I only liked about half of them, so something like $400-440 would have been on stuff I regretted paying for or actively disliked. EDIT: Another way to look at it is, three games in my top 5 for 2022 came from Game Pass (and that's true whether Pentiment ends up in my top 5 or not) Proof: 1. Elden Ring 2. SIGNALIS (game pass) 3. Splatoon 3 4. As Dusk Falls (game pass) 5. Weird West (game pass)